Anti-oil-fouling Au/BiOCl coating for visible light-driven photocatalytic inactivation of bacteria

In this work, gold/bismuth oxychloride (Au/BiOCl) nanocomposites with different morphologies were successfully prepared by simple solvothermal method and sodium borohydride reduction method, which exhibited significantly efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic disinfection for Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus). Particularly, the flower-like Au/BiOCl nanocomposite showed the highest photocatalytic bac-tericidal performance among the prepared Au/BiOCl samples. The radical trapping experiments revealed that the hole was the main reactive species responsible for the inactivation of S.aureus over Au/BiOCl composite. The enhanced photocatalytic bactericidal effect could be attributed to the enhanced adsorp-tion intensity of visible light that originated from the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of Au, rapid transfer and space transport of hot electrons caused by the hierarchical structure of BiOCl layered com-pound. Furthermore, the Au/BiOCl coating prepared on stainless steel wire mesh via in-situ synthesis method exhibited excellent superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic performance, which endowed the coating with anti-oil-fouling in water. More importantly, compared with Au/BiOCl powder catalyst, the prepared Au/BiOCl coating with anti-oil-fouling also possessed high photocatalytic bactericidal activ-ity and stable recycling performance. (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this work, gold/bismuth oxychloride nanocomposites with different morphologies were prepared and showed efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic disinfection. The flower-like Au/BiOCl nanocomposite exhibited the highest photocatalytic bactericidal performance. The enhanced photocatalytic effect was attributed to the surface plasmon resonance effect of Au and the hierarchical structure of BiOCl.